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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

First Impressions - Wii U + Nintendo Land

So it certainly took me a while to get around to setting up the Wii U. After all, it would have to be set up in the living room, and that place hasn't been cleaned in seemingly forever. Unfortunately, it came upon me to do all the cleaning, which I was fairly against doing since most of the dust that I found behind the TV and in the TV stand consisted of huge clumps of cat hairs and other thick layers of dust. Also considering it's spring pollen allergy season as well, stirring up these dust clumps is one of the last thing I'd like to do. Regardless, I had no help in vacuuming, wiping, and cleaning up the TV stand what-so-ever. My hesitation for cleaning up after the cats can be best understood if you've read my rant about them here, and my gripe against them forcompletely ruining Firion's life. I haven't exactly expressed my full feelings about Firion's life VS undeserving cats, but that's an ugly rant that I've omitted writing about in full detail, and neither is it the point of this post. The point HERE is my reason for why it took so long to set up the Wii U that we had since launch day.

So setting up the Wii U in the living room also meant that the Wii that was set up there needed to be moved elsewhere to make room for the Wii U. So I brought it back here in the room where I do all my blogging, PC gaming, and some handheld gaming at now so that I can finally finish No More Heroes, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and several other games I've been meaning to play. However, the TV back here seems to be too old to properly display the AV input the Wii uses, so that was absolutely pointless...

The Wii U works well in the living room though. Nice to have at least one HD TV in the house, not that I have any games that takes advantage of it quite yet. The tablet is very neat, both as a controller and for what features it has. As far as first impressions go, it is very responsive, touch screen works well, and when I heard that the tablet can function as a TV remote, I was impartial to it, but when it comes to actually using it, it is so much more convenient to be able to adjust the TV volume without having to let go of the game controller to grab the TV remote to change things. What's even neat is that the Wii U doesn't have to be on to use the tablet for the TV remote features! All you had to do was input what brand of TV and even cable box you use, and that was enough to get it to recognize the signals for our Samsung TV and AT&T cable box. In the end, though, Nintendo managed to put all the features of a Nintendo DSi into the console experience with the tablet. The tablet DOES contain a touch screen, camera, microphone, and more.

As for the console, I can tell that internet integration is a big part of the Wii U. It's all about the Nintendo community now with all the other players who are playing the Wii U. Even in the menu screen, you see Miis walking around and sharing comments and drawings that people have given regarding a game through speech bubbles. In that sense, it certainly makes it harder for Nintendo to make the Wii U a kid-friendly console. Thankfully, it DOES have a parental control setting for those who care, but I have no reason to touch that at all. >_>

The only game we have for the Wii U so far is Nintendo Land, and it certainly plays pretty well. I wish we had more Wii Motion Plus controllers though to play more multiplayer games with more people. As of now, we only have one Wii Motion Plus, and the tablet, so we're a bit limited in what games we can play with a group of friends. Either way, the game is pretty fun for casual play with friends. Game Grumps sure showed me that, which got me interested in Nintendo Land in the first place.

The problem I have now is that since the Wii U isn't backwards compatible with GameCube games, I no longer have access to them with the current setup. Even worse, Wii U can't use GameCube controllers either, so Wii games that I play with GC controllers like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and such would have to be with the Wiimote. I don't even think the Classic Controller works on it, now that I think about it...

That's all I have to say about the Wii U so far. Being that it's out in the living room, I can't say that my gaming situation has changed much however, so who knows whether if I'll have a more detailed review for this out any time soon.